It seemed like just another picture perfect fall day. My grandfather
called my teenage cousin and me to go with him for a ride. We loved to
spend time with him—especially on road trips. As it turned out, this
would be a very different kind of trip. Coughing all along the way, he
drove straight to the hospital. While my cousin and I waited for hours,
my grandfather was admitted. That was our final road trip. My
grandfather died after a brief stay in the hospital.
I loved my grandfather. It ached my heart to think: what if he had gone in sooner?
Would his doctors have discovered the cancer in time? But men don’t
like to go the doctor, do they? We don’t like to admit that we have
problems, and we certainly hate confessing that we need help. But
acquiescing to the fear of vulnerability and to our culture’s false
standard of masculinity (i.e., “I’m a man, I can handle it”) often makes
for tragic endings. There’s a lesson in this for all pastors. Living by
the motto, “I don’t need help, and I can’t expose my vulnerabilities,”
can lead to ministerial death, even when Christ offers abundantly
abounding grace to rescue us.
In his classic essay on the dangers of ministry, “The Almost Inevitable Ruin of Every Minister,” Donald Whitney writes that: Continue at Bobby Scott
